Selbstredend selbzweit selbdritt: Serpentine Selves in the Poetry of Roza Domascyna

Canadian Slavonic Papers, Sep-Dec 2003 by Dueck, Cheryl

Under the double star

in the twiland with double-tongued duelity

who zero who one who original who copy

in double the double income earners with a double paddle

and double sentry in front of the duplex

dropped by the double nelson hold and double turn

around the double axis in the double eye double salt

bobbing to the double-dot colon:

holding the dubble-b as dubble bubble and dubble cup!

if it doesn't work

no double pictures double exposures will help

or double morals double attachments

while lifting doppelbock-beer playing doppelkopf

winning

if it fails there are two double possibilities

either

to go to the double bottom and secure a line

to make a double knot and on double impact

to expect a double break

or

to reach into the double plug

to draw the gun with double barrel and double hit

to execute the intonation of the double fugue

finally

the double cross with the double seam of the incandescent lamp on the wrist

the double letter with dual ignition and double-stop

to rip open

and in closing

to sing in a double quartet in double rows in double choir

jump from a double-decker

as doubler of double meaning of doppelgangerdom

to have a double wedding to stick out the double marriage

which need not exclude bi-sexion and walking the double line

(to be sure there is hidden behind double window with closed double door

to the double room in the double bed under the double weave covered up

to the double chin a double consonant on the double lips)

The poem functions on two levels; as an exploration of linguistic or cultural encounters, and of the relationship of a man and a woman. The syntactic repetition is playful and rythmic, yet rich with meaning. In the first line, "in the twiland with double-tongued duelity," the mood is both romantic and dangerous, as nightfall, and the end of the land, approach. Duplicity and confrontation are established as inherent in the coupling. The pairs are at one moment fraught with the tension of a strained rope, and at another, sing together in the counterpoint of a fugue. The intercultural seduction ends in a double consonant on the lips-perhaps a kiss-and yet, behind the closed doors and tightly tucked under the covers, tension permeates the bedroom. Undeniably electric, the clash of cultures and sexes is a source of energy in the poem. Mikhail Bakhtin's comments on the productive potential of the doubling effect which occurs in the collision of cultures in novelistic hybrids also illuminate this aspect of Domascyna's poetry:

[The] hybrid is not only double-voiced and double-accented... but is also double-languaged; for in it there are not only (and not even so much) two individual consciousnesses, two voices, two accents, as there are two socio-linguistic consciousnesses, two epochs... that come together and consciously fight it out on the territory of the utterance.

... [I]t is the collision between differing points of view on the world that are embedded in these forms...

... [Moreover] such unconscious hybrids have been at the same time profoundly productive historically: they are pregnant with potential for new world views, with new 'internal forms' for perceiving the world in words.